Chuck Hagel has just announced that he intends to vote to confirm John Bolton’s nomination as Ambassador to the United Nations. We regret to add Senator Hagel to the “America Alone Alliance” but must.

Citizens for Global Solutions has just launched StopBolton.org. There’s streaming video of Bolton’s 1994 comments on the U.N. on the front page. Check it out.

Yes, I know. Rice said that John Bolton was her “first choice” as the nominee for American Ambassador to the U.N. Appearances are sooo important in this town.

MoveOn.org has entered the fray on John Bolton’s nomination. The following email letter went out to MoveOn subscribers in states of Democratic Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as well as those in Rhode Island, Nebraska, and Indiana to cover Lincoln Chafee, Chuck Hagel, and Richard Lugar.

Thanks to all who entered The Washington Note‘s contest to name the Senate factions supporting and opposing John Bolton’s nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. There were more than 400 entries, and the decision has been extremely tough.

I just received a phone call from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I was informed that the Committee will definitively not hold hearings on John Bolton’s nomination next week and that they will occur some time in April.

NOTE TO WASHINGTON NOTE READERS: Please immediately call the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Majority Staff) office at 202-224-4651 and state that while you are not opposed to the Bolton Hearings themselves, you are asking Senator Lugar NOT TO ANNOUNCE THE DATE OF THE HEARINGS TODAY.

We will name the factions tonight — but as one TWN reader said, “who cares — we just need to get to work opposing Bolton’s confirmation and flood the appropriate Senate offices with our views.” Soooo right.

Sidney Blumenthal’s column today exposes the perversity of appointing John Bolton to serve as our Ambassador to the United Nations. Here are the most poignant lines in the piece, but I recommend reading it in full: — John Bolton has been named by President Bush as the US ambassador to the UN.

The time line just got pushed up. This just in from a very well-placed source: FYI, I’m hearing that they are trying to move this nomination very quickly because the longer it hangs out there, the more time opponents have to mobilize.